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"It is a damn lie to suggest that there isn't enough competition in the oil business," charged Union Oil Chairman and President Fred Hartley in response to Carter's claim that there was not. While praising the thrust of Carter's energy alarm, General Motors Chairman Thomas Murphy protested that some of the President's Washington-oriented advisers, far more than Carter, "are influenced by their own life-styles and they don't understand the dimension of the American public." A less biased criticism of Carter's plan was that its measures were far milder than those suggested by the apocalyptic terms in which he couched the crisis in his Monday-night address to the people, and that their mildness would neither rally the country nor solve the energy dilemma. After asking Americans to wage "the moral equivalent of war" in meeting "the greatest challenge that our country will face during our lifetime," Carter put forward proposals that were hardly draconian. (Humorist Russell Baker observed that the acronym for moral equivalent of war is MEOW.) Indeed, if the financial discomfiture was to be as minimal as the Administration was claiming at week's end, the essential changes for Americans would be ones of habit and life-style—but those could prove more painful than dollar losses.
In general, Carter would let domestic oil prices rise to world levels, increase prices of newly discovered natural gas by 20% (to approach oil prices), slap a 5¢-per-gal. tax on gasoline each year if conservation goals were not met, and use tax penalties on "gas guzzler" cars and rebates on small cars to encourage purchasers to select energy-efficient autos. To many liberals, this was not going far enough. "Large Chevy owners will now have to switch to small Chevies. I don't consider this a sacrifice," said Tom Quinn, special assistant on environmental protection to California Governor Jerry Brown.
Carter's dilemma was that any comprehensive approach to energy consumption and production had to contain specific proposals repugnant to many groups. On energy, indeed, all Americans belong to one or more special or sectional interests, depending upon their personal transportation, heating, and vocational or leisure habits. Carter's program faced the danger of being sliced to death even by those in sympathy with its broad goals. It would have been politically hard, if not impossible, for Carter to demand more severe sacrifices by everybody when Congress might not even pass a package requiring small sacrifices. The proposals, after all, most immediately affect powerful lobbies to which Congress has long listened attentively.
Methodically and skillfully, the President went about his task last week. He first explained the urgency of the energy shortage to the nation in an earnest televised talk from the Oval Office, then revealed what he intended to do about it in another prime-time address to Congress, and finally gave reporters a chance to pick his plan apart at a televised press conference. (Asked at the press conference if all this did not amount to overkill, Carter confessed: "There is a danger of overexposure. But this has been an extraordinary week.")